What Is Zero Trust Security?

by NetBrain Nov 1, 2025

Cybersecurity threats change quickly. Thankfully, security measures can also quickly evolve to keep up with new threats online. Zero Trust security is a key update that every company needs to understand, especially as many workers operate remotely or bring their own devices into the office.

However, following Zero Trust principles isn’t enough to protect your company on its own. You also need an automation solution that can keep up with tracking changes, identities, and loopholes in your system. Explore what Zero Trust is and how to implement it on a practical level to increase your confidence against cyber threats below.

What Does Zero Trust Mean?

The mantra of Zero Trust security is “never trust, always verify.” This approach to cybersecurity is different from early frameworks, which focused on securing a network. Zero Trust allows companies to secure their computing across diverse networks, focusing instead on users, assets, and other resources.

Traditional security models took a “castle-and-moat” approach, putting barriers around a company’s network to keep information secure. However, changes like remote work and cloud computing have made it impossible to build a secure “moat” around modern companies. A new approach was needed, and Zero Trust is an effective way to handle new security challenges.

What Are the Three Main Concepts of Zero Trust?

Zero Trust is a security approach that looks different for every company. It follows practical principles you can implement in any given situation, allowing companies to protect their data and systems. As the name suggests, Zero Trust security means that trust is never granted implicitly.

Access is denied to users at every stage, restricting lateral movement within a company’s network. Although Zero Trust isn’t perfect, it is highly effective for today’s security concerns.

Here are the three main concepts of Zero Trust.

1. Verify Explicitly

To help ensure users are who they say they are, Zero Trust security procedures require authentication based on several data points, such as:

• User identity.
• Location.
• Device health.

By requiring proof of identity often, companies can protect their systems from unapproved access. Acquiring access to one resource or asset doesn’t automatically grant access to several — everything is segmented, requiring additional permissions for users to access.

2. Use Least-Privilege Access

Combined with user verification, least-privileged access makes systems even more secure. This principle means that users are given the minimum level of access they need to complete tasks. Sometimes this access is time-bound, restricting a user’s access even further.

3. Assume Breach

Another hallmark of Zero Trust is that it assumes attackers are already present in the network. The goal is to prevent them from harming an extensive part of the system through micro-segmentation and constant monitoring. If you can identify attackers quickly and they already have limited access within the system, you can protect company data and processes from severe damage.

What Is Zero Trust Architecture?

Zero Trust is a security approach that assumes no trust until users can verify themselves. The practical way to apply this approach is called Zero Trust architecture (ZTA). Components of Zero Trust architecture include:

• Identity verification: Authentication checks are required before any access to network resources.
• Micro-segmentation: Networks are broken down into isolated segments to reduce the impact of a breach.
• Continuous monitoring: The system is constantly searched for potential anomalies and threats.
• Heightened visibility: Threats are identified quickly because systems and users are easy to observe.
• End-to-end encryption: To restrict access even further, all data is encrypted during rest and transit.

To enforce these principles, companies use technology known as Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). This technology allows companies to follow Zero Trust principles and create secure connections between users and resources once their identity has been verified.

3 Practical Challenges of Zero Trust Implementation

Although Zero Trust is more effective than past security models, there are challenges to implementing it successfully. For example, someone can still steal identification requirements and access systems they shouldn’t be able to operate in. Companies that use older equipment may struggle to update user verification processes, and forgotten equipment can create security loopholes.

Here are some common Zero Trust implementation difficulties and how companies can address them.

1. Legacy and Hybrid Environment Management

Whether you’re using older systems or a mix of on-premise and multi-cloud infrastructure, it can be challenging to apply Zero Trust principles across the board. For one thing, older systems don’t always support modern processes for communicating and verifying identities. A mix of infrastructures complicates security by offering two very different sets of security risks and ways to enter your system.

To handle this challenge, you can still use Zero Trust as a framework and then apply additional security measures to fill any gaps. Updating old equipment can help you slowly improve company security. In the meantime, you can apply Zero Trust principles to updated equipment and access permissions.

2. Lack of Network Visibility

Modern networks can become complicated quickly, combining many different applications, users, and resources across the company. Keeping track of all these moving parts can feel impossible and make it challenging to maintain least-privilege access and network segmentation.

Thankfully, network automation software can help. It offers a real-time map of a company’s network, with comprehensive detail that lets you track every application and user. Understanding what you have is an essential first step when implementing Zero Trust security measures for your company.

3. Policy Enforcement Burdens

Zero Trust requires detailed oversight of all assets, and managing that number of interactions may be impossible for your workforce. Each individual security policy must be created, managed, and validated, creating thousands of required actions across every user, device, and application in your network.

Network automation software is also the answer here. With the right software, you can automate security policies. This means that management and validation move from a person task to a computer task, saving time and stress. Automating network security checks also removes the potential for human error, making it easier to implement Zero Trust than to follow older security models.

Achieve True Zero Trust with NetBrain

NetBrain’s network automation platform is the ideal support for implementing Zero Trust security measures in your company. Our software provides the automated, continuous, data-driven visibility you need to proactively verify security policies and ensure they’re enforced across every segment of your environment. With NetBrain, you can handle the challenges of Zero Trust implementation and achieve a more secure environment.

We’ve been supporting clients with network automation since 2004. Our No-Code Day-2 Network Automation and AI platform improves network problem diagnosis and helps maintain ideal conditions. It supports hybrid multi-cloud networks and works by assessing, replicating, and reverse engineering the original network design.

Schedule a demo today to learn more about our No-Code Day-2 Network Automation and AI platform capabilities!

Linked Sources:

• https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/207/final
• https://www.netbrain.com/solution/security/
• https://www.netbrain.com/blog/a-false-sense-of-security/?highlight=verification
• https://www.netbrain.com/product/preventive-network-automation/&highlight=zero+trust
• https://www.netbrain.com/solution/hybrid-network-visibility/
• https://www.netbrain.com/why-netbrain/
• https://www.netbrain.com/